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sure is hot in here

Has anyone here ever done a test to see how hot it can get inside a beehive during some of the hotter days in summer? I know that the bees try to regulate the brood nest temperature to keep it in the lower 90's or so, but just seems to me that when it is 100 degrees outside and you basically have a closed up box (the hive) in the sun, it would get way above that temperature no matter how much fanning they do. If so, the brood must be able to withstand higher temperatures without harm, as I have never seen bees hauling out dead larvae or pupae in large amounts during the heat of summer, like they will when they have chilled brood. John

Re: sure is hot in here

There was a picture in one of the old bee books,I think ABC's,of a hive next to a burning building.The hive was actually scorched.A fireman took pity on the bees and threw a bucket of water on them.They survived.I wonder if the newer editions have that picture and story.

Re: sure is hot in here

As temperatures rise bees shift their foraging to water. The returning water foragers will deposit droplets throughout the hive and the circulating air will evaporate it. Sometime, eons ago, bees figured out that evaporating water will reduce the ambient temperature. In essence the bees create an airconditioning system. Have you ever seen an evaporative cooling system for a greenhouse or chicken house? The bees were a couple of gazillion years ahead of mankind on this.

Dan www.boogerhillbee.com
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards

Re: sure is hot in here

Originally Posted by gone2seed

They survived.

I was working for a beekeeping operation...and we got a call from a landowner where we had some hives. Some kids had set fire to the hives. We went out and most were burned to the ground but I remember one...the bottom board was completely burned and when we opened it much of the comb melted. But ya know...those bees survived. We put them in a new hive and moved them....and they lived happily ever after. True story...except the happily ever after part.

Dan www.boogerhillbee.com
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards

Re: sure is hot in here

Lets get back on track here, but has anyone ever checked the temperature as I suggested, or are we going to just believe that no matter how hot it gets outside (brush and forest fires aside) the brood nest never goes over 90 something degrees? John

Re: sure is hot in here

Hi John,

Just for you I will stick data loggers into my hives this year, it gets over 100 here in summer, the hives will get afternoon shade though but if anyone wants, I will put one out in full sun all day for a bit and we can see the differences.

Re: sure is hot in here

Well, I stand corrected, I just noticed in the ABC/XYZ book there is a table of recorded temps in the hive during a summer day, and it says that even with an outside temp of 108 the brood area stayed at around 94, does'nt mention whether the hive was in the sun or shade though. I still will do a test myself this year, ought to be interesting. John

Re: sure is hot in here

The hourly chart (page 186) show outside temperatures over a 24 hr period varied from 68° F to 108° F, while the temperature in the brood area varied from 92.8° F to 94.1° F. The test hive was in the shade. The experiment was at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

And the excerpt starts on page 181, so you don't have to wade thru hundreds of pages to see the chart.

Re: sure is hot in here

Originally Posted by jmgi

Lets get back on track here, but has anyone ever checked the temperature as I suggested, or are we going to just believe that no matter how hot it gets outside (brush and forest fires aside) the brood nest never goes over 90 something degrees? John

hivetool.org

There are graphs, with live data.

I had one hive under an automated scale setup last spring, but, we had some technical issues with it, and abandoned the project for now. I'll probably get one going again this spring. With a scale under the hive, and a temp probe inside, data logging every 5 minutes.

Re: sure is hot in here

Originally Posted by TheBuzz

It's not typically 40s and 50s during the week in New England during January.

Not typically, but it happens more regularly than I think everyone wants to remember. We always seems to remember the difficult extremes, so summer heat and winter cold. We don't usually remember the winter warm and the summer cool.